For Detroit Design Month, Jack Craig hosted an interdisciplinary creative work
Jack Craig's studio, the location of the Cranbrook Chair Show, is probably the simplest prototype in Detroit's design world. In the eastern part of the city, well-ventilated cinder block buildings were once used as tool and die workshops for metal stamping and manufacturing. Craig discovered it after many years of abandonment, during which time it served as a various garbage dump. Three years of hard work finally reached the pinnacle in today's studio-a spacious room filled with light, some of which came from a gate. It was transformed from a huge hole, and a fire truck crashed in a cinder block.
The infamous consequences of Detroit's deindustrialization, which led to the decline of social infrastructure and the decline of the city, have now taken over its reputation. The open community in Detroit is generally unknown to outsiders and is driven by cooperation and experimentation. Usually, the core of these innovations is the practice of reuse and reuse, just like Craig's studio.
Left: Berg Berg, Iris Eichenberg, Alberte Tranberg. Right: The pain is only temporary, Kelly Agius.
Detroit is the only American city to be named a city of design by UNESCO. It is defining its upcoming cultural renaissance and aims to rebuild the city in an idealistic form. Detroit Design Month, driven by the design core every September, will highlight future-thinking ideas and foster innovation in the city.
As part of the 2021 Design Month program, students and alumni from the acclaimed Cranbrook College of Art have revived the tradition of the Cranbrook Chair Exhibition. Designers can go beyond the function of "chairs" to create works of art. The show was hosted by Craig, an alumnus of the program, and exhibited works by artists from various disciplines such as sculpture, film, and architecture.
Craig's BCF chair examines most of the man-made landscapes in our lives, collecting interior materials and applying them beyond the intended purpose. His chair pieced together locally sourced carpets, and then used flames to fuse them into a coral-like structure. "[Carpet] is at this intersection of the distribution economy, but it must have this kind of mass appeal. Mass appeal itself involves more primitive things," Craig explained. "It tries to be an animal in comfort and warmth, but it is a false flesh."
Left: Cookie Chair, Mandy Moran. Right: NEO series Winzer chair, Aaron Blendowski.
Among the forty characteristic works, the chair takes various unique forms: the hand-stitched leather chair is made of obviously curved steel (Iris Eichenberg, Alberte Tranberg), and the metal spring chair draws inspiration from aesthetics and pain (Kelly Agius), the wood chips are arranged into a long lounge chair, placed in front of the film steel background (Mandy Moran), strange carvings on the traditional green chair act as non-traditional gestures (Aaron Brenowski ).
The pink plush toilet designed by Jenna VanFleteren takes inspiration from her grandmother's monochromatic bathroom and defines a "chair" as anything that can be seated. As the daughter of a plumber, the toilet has always been VanFleteren's brain-her Soft Stool is an early version of the millennial imagination of the toilet.
At the Cranbrook Chair Exhibition, the chair was rethinked as a structure. The artists draw inspiration from materials that still exist in the city's past and explore a new future for them.
Soft stool (2nd edition), Jenna VanFleteren.
Left: Berg Berg, Iris Eichenberg, Alberte Tranberg. Right: The pain is only temporary, Kelly Agius.
Left: Cookie Chair, Mandy Moran. Right: NEO series Winzer chair, Aaron Blendowski.
Soft stool (2nd edition), Jenna VanFleteren.
Left: Berg Berg, Iris Eichenberg, Alberte Tranberg. Right: The pain is only temporary, Kelly Agius.
Left: Berg Berg, Iris Eichenberg, Alberte Tranberg. Right: The pain is only temporary, Kelly Agius.
Left: Cookie Chair, Mandy Moran. Right: NEO series Winzer chair, Aaron Blendowski.
Left: Cookie Chair, Mandy Moran. Right: NEO series Winzer chair, Aaron Blendowski.
Soft stool (2nd edition), Jenna VanFleteren.